Night has gone silent here, with no answer or comfort to be had, and the speaker responds by kissing the emptiness itself. It's a small, almost desperate act of tenderness, done "that I might not go mad." Darkness becomes something to be touched rather than feared.
From there the poem turns toward a strange kind of protectiveness. Even the "most humble nothing" deserves to be spared and left wild, like the world on its first day, when God was in a place with no home in it. The speaker seems to value emptiness and wildness for their own sake, without wanting to fill or tame them.
The ending is quiet but firm. "I am no one" could sound like despair, yet the next line says "I am going / to live." Losing a sense of self seems to free the speaker rather than defeat them. The mood moves from isolation and dread to a stark, hard-won acceptance, and the title's "high and lonesome" suits that feeling of being alone but still alive.